Analysis of Dr. sam
Eugene Field 1850 (St. Louis) – 1895 (Chicago)
TO MISS GRACE KING
Down in the old French quarter,
Just out of Rampart street,
I wend my way
At close of day
Unto the quaint retreat
Where lives the Voodoo Doctor
By some esteemed a sham,
Yet I'll declare there's none elsewhere
So skilled as Doctor Sam
With the claws of a deviled crawfish,
The juice of the prickly prune,
And the quivering dew
From a yarb that grew
In the light of a midnight moon!
I never should have known him
But for the colored folk
That here obtain
And ne'er in vain
That wizard's art invoke;
For when the Eye that's Evil
Would him and his'n damn,
The negro's grief gets quick relief
Of Hoodoo-Doctor Sam.
With the caul of an alligator,
The plume of an unborn loon,
And the poison wrung
From a serpent's tongue
By the light of a midnight moon!
In all neurotic ailments
I hear that he excels,
And he insures
Immediate cures
Of weird, uncanny spells;
The most unruly patient
Gets docile as a lamb
And is freed from ill by the potent skill
Of Hoodoo-Doctor Sam;
Feathers of strangled chickens,
Moss from the dank lagoon,
And plasters wet
With spider sweat
In the light of a midnight moon!
They say when nights are grewsome
And hours are, oh! so late,
Old Sam steals out
And hunts about
For charms that hoodoos hate!
That from the moaning river
And from the haunted glen
He silently brings what eerie things
Give peace to hoodooed men:--
The tongue of a piebald 'possum,
The tooth of a senile 'coon,
The buzzard's breath that smells of death,
And the film that lies
On a lizard's eyes
In the light of a midnight moon!
Scheme | x abccbadxdxeffE xghhgxdxDaeiie xjkkjxdxDxellE dmnnmaoxoxexppE |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1111 1001110 11111 1111 1111 100101 110110 110101 1101111 111101 1011011 0110101 001001 10111 0011011 1101111 110101 1101 0101 11101 1101110 110111 0111101 11101 10111100 0111111 00101 10101 1011011 0101010 111101 0101 01001 110101 0101010 110101 0111110101 11101 1011010 110101 0101 1101 0011011 111111 0101111 1111 0101 11111 1101010 010101 110011101 11111 0110110 011011 01011111 00111 10101 0011011 |
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 1,612 |
Words | 290 |
Sentences | 8 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 1, 14, 14, 14, 15 |
Lines Amount | 58 |
Letters per line (avg) | 21 |
Words per line (avg) | 5 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 241 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 57 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:30 min read
- 117 Views
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"Dr. sam" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 10 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/12937/dr.-sam>.
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